"The most Preferable and Trusted Supplier of Political News Is..." Political Competence and Internet News Sources: Is there Love? Cases of Austria, Italy and the Netherlands

Do those who are more politically competent rely to a greater degree on Internet as a source of news, in general, and political news, in particular, compared to other news media? Does level of political competence make individuals trust higher traditional Internet news sources or alternative ones, for instance, blogs? And are there any similarities and differences in such preferences between different Western European countries? In comparative perspective, this paper explores relationships between political competence, on one side, and using Internet for getting information about politics as well as trust to so-called 'traditional' and 'alternative' Internet news sources, on the other side. The concept of political competence embodies six components: interest in politics, frequency of intentional getting political information from news media, political activity, factual political knowledge, frequency of political discussions and frequency of challenging opponent's standpoints during such political discussions. Under 'traditional' Internet news sources, it is understood websites of newspapers, TV-channels, magazines, news agencies etc., while various social networks, blogs that also are sources of political information are referred to 'alternative' ones. This exploratory outlook on relationships between political competence as well as its separate components and use of and trust to Internet news sources as channels and suppliers of political information is a part of bigger comparative research on effects of a country's media literacy context and individuals' political competence on their ability to spot manipulated media information in Internet news coverage of foreign affairs. The mentioned study was conducted in three European countries (Austria, Italy and the Netherlands), varying as to media literacy context, in the form of a quasi-experiment. Participants of the study were university students, mostly at the age of 18-26 years - the age category which usually is referred to as the 'heaviest' Internet users.